It's also clueless because it's extremely difficult to run a business or service online if your views/product/service is despised by a large enough percentage of the population, due to every single layer of the stack being controlled by someone that can and will shut down anyone they disagree with. ISPs, web hosts, anti DDOS providers, software providers, domain name registrars, payment processors... all of them think of themselves as the internet moral police, and will boot customers/clients if enough people scream at them to do so (or in the case of things like porn or gambling, because it's 'convenient').

So running an alternative gets more and more costly and impractical the more controversy you bring, to the point you're probably required to run your own datacentre and networking links if people hate you enough.

That's not true of a real life business or organisation, which gets services provided by utilities and where (assuming they own the building), only the government could boot them out.

He’s ignoring this, which makes the essay weak and pointless.

Commercial sites need customers, so they have to edit the clientele in order to survive. Smaller sites, commercial or not, are like clubs and they can set their membership rules as desired. The former gets the bland middle ground. The latter handles the edges. Most people will just go elsewhere when faced with noise.

The metaphor is interesting but the existence of .gov and .mil domains indicates that the internet isn't fully privatized, while the .edu domain indicates that schools are still on the internet as well. Public schools do seem to have digital auditoriums, and the question of whether first amendment rights are violated in them is an interesting one.

I have noticed that many public libraries have web sites. I like Doctorow's idea of having digital town squares and parks as well, assuming they're not ruined by crime, garbage, pollution and advertising, as many physical spaces are.

This article follows the age old and wrong pattern of defining freedom of speech as some absolute freedom based on nothing but it’s name and ignoring context and contents, then calling everything censorship. Imagine if the constitution was explicit about citizens having “freedom of popcorn”. Here made with a stupid name that has no relation to what it is defined as to highlight the distinction between name and definition. This freedom of popcorn would state that the government shall not inhibit the freedom of movement of its citizens without due process.

That would be a fairly ok freedom to establish. Essentially saying “the government cannot just put you in jail for no good reason”. Now comes the dumb part. We would then have authors like OP arguing that when their neighbor prevents them from camping in their kitchen, they are infringing on their freedom of popcorn, and are thereby effectively putting them in jail without process unless they let them camp out in their kitchen.

"The problem isn’t the calls they make — it’s the lack of an alternative when they get it wrong."

But as much as he says that... do we really believe there will ever be an alternative?

And there is no monopoly on being able to set up a web server at a colo and create your own social media website where like minded people can listen to themselves - ie Parlor.

There are alternatives, they are just not convenient.

There are no monopolies except for governmental - that's where the game is rigged the most.